Following Your Bliss in the Working World
"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living." - Joseph Campbell
We only have a short amount of time on this Earth with a limited amount of energy each day to progress ourselves forward. If we think of the time that we spend, eight hours of that is usually spent on a job. Six to eight hours are spent sleeping, and you get roughly five hours to create things, to live life, and to move forward. Either we're a consumer or a producer as a gentleman once said at a conference for entrepreneurs. It's in the moments in between that we create a life for ourselves. Either you're doing something that you love or doing something else in order to do what you love. And it's gone within a moment. I remember when I was eighteen with lofty dreams and aspirations as if it were a minute ago. Now, at age forty, I see with different glasses a life that was lived. And from a completely different perspective.
Joseph Campbell said that the secret to life is following your bliss. Doing what makes you happy with the time you have left. We all walk around like we have all the time in the world, but we don't. And one day, we will realize that the times up. What did we write? What did we direct? What did we pretend to be? What did we do? Did we have fun every day of our life, or did we just exist and move forward. Progress.
As a person who got kicked in the face by life, and then took the time to truly figure out what I needed to do next, it was a daily occurrence. It's daily remembering that "Oh crap, I'm gonna die" and then saying, "But not yet, what can I do that truly makes me happy." Following your bliss.
As a teacher in Marion, Arkansas, I realized that being a teacher required much more of my mental energy than I was willing to give. I had to truly make a decision whether I wanted to continue to do teaching when I left Marion and become a teacher here in Oklahoma. For less pay and worse benefits. But I seriously decided not to do it and for the simple reason that I didn't want to work a job that was going to take up all of my mental space. There had to be room for bliss. For what I wanted to accomplish with the time I had left. And that's where I found this blog. Which I love to write in.
If you're stuck in a place where you're not happy, ask yourself what you're following. Are you following a dream of money that you will spend one day that will make you feel completely fulfilled? It seems like everything is hedge betting on whether you make it to 65 or not. Most of you who might be reading this have outlived Bruce Lee and Kurt Cobain at this time, but have yet to make your Enter the Dragon or write your Nevermind. My suggestion would be that the thing that you're wanting to do and you've always wanted to do....do it.
We only have a short amount of time on this Earth with a limited amount of energy each day to progress ourselves forward. If we think of the time that we spend, eight hours of that is usually spent on a job. Six to eight hours are spent sleeping, and you get roughly five hours to create things, to live life, and to move forward. Either we're a consumer or a producer as a gentleman once said at a conference for entrepreneurs. It's in the moments in between that we create a life for ourselves. Either you're doing something that you love or doing something else in order to do what you love. And it's gone within a moment. I remember when I was eighteen with lofty dreams and aspirations as if it were a minute ago. Now, at age forty, I see with different glasses a life that was lived. And from a completely different perspective.
Joseph Campbell said that the secret to life is following your bliss. Doing what makes you happy with the time you have left. We all walk around like we have all the time in the world, but we don't. And one day, we will realize that the times up. What did we write? What did we direct? What did we pretend to be? What did we do? Did we have fun every day of our life, or did we just exist and move forward. Progress.
As a person who got kicked in the face by life, and then took the time to truly figure out what I needed to do next, it was a daily occurrence. It's daily remembering that "Oh crap, I'm gonna die" and then saying, "But not yet, what can I do that truly makes me happy." Following your bliss.
As a teacher in Marion, Arkansas, I realized that being a teacher required much more of my mental energy than I was willing to give. I had to truly make a decision whether I wanted to continue to do teaching when I left Marion and become a teacher here in Oklahoma. For less pay and worse benefits. But I seriously decided not to do it and for the simple reason that I didn't want to work a job that was going to take up all of my mental space. There had to be room for bliss. For what I wanted to accomplish with the time I had left. And that's where I found this blog. Which I love to write in.
If you're stuck in a place where you're not happy, ask yourself what you're following. Are you following a dream of money that you will spend one day that will make you feel completely fulfilled? It seems like everything is hedge betting on whether you make it to 65 or not. Most of you who might be reading this have outlived Bruce Lee and Kurt Cobain at this time, but have yet to make your Enter the Dragon or write your Nevermind. My suggestion would be that the thing that you're wanting to do and you've always wanted to do....do it.
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